


Flying, falling, stand your ground

by kineticallyanywhere



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, Hugs, I fit 5 PoVs in one bit, Jaune Arc's lingering PTSD, Maria Calavera's sarcasm, Oscar Pine's magic powers, Penny Polendina princess of my heart, Post-Volume 7 (RWBY), What's the plan Ruby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22739932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kineticallyanywhere/pseuds/kineticallyanywhere
Summary: "Knock knockSomething’s flown up next to them on radar. Much too small to be a grimm, Maria had assumed it was a bird. It’s neither of those things. She looks out the window to her left andOscar Pine is outside the window."I needed some sort of follow-up scene to survive the hiatus. Featuring: Maria as the 'this may as well just happen' meme; new magical sixth senses; and, most importantly, How the HECK Do You Make Sure Everyone Doesn't Die in the Next Thirty Minutes When Destruction Incarnate is at Your Front Door and You Still Have a Whole Season to Wrap Up This Arc
Relationships: Jaune Arc & Oscar Pine, Oscar Pine & Everyone, Oscar Pine & Penny Polendina
Comments: 16
Kudos: 221





	Flying, falling, stand your ground

**Author's Note:**

> Just this one-shot basically got all my ideas down to where I'm pretty content to wait for the new season to see where RT goes, but maybe I'll end up writing more over the break? I love all these guys so much

To say that Maria has been having A Day wouldn't do it justice. May as well try to buy the SDC with the lint in her pocket. To the east the rising sun paints the sky orange and white, and Maria and her cargo have not slept since its last venture into morning. The kids have pulled more stunts than she has in the past night, but even as the sun rises, the night doesn't appear to be over yet. Clouds of blackness roll towards the kingdom as if heralding the god of Darkness himself. 

If only they had it that easy. 

The kids in the back barely speak. Pietro did Maria the pleasure of adding the Team Aura Tracking app to her eyes, so she knows the kids are running on fumes. Even Jaune is dragging his bar out of the yellow like it weighs of the world. She doesn't know if the others have taken to their scrolls yet, and prays they keep patience not to. At least not yet. Now is not the time to lose their heads and leap before looking. 

So even as she flies them to nowhere, she'll keep vigilance on the last circle in the line. The head unaccounted for in her cargo. 

The bar empty. 

Wherever Oscar Pine is, she _prays_ he's not alone. His signal isn't lost, so wherever he ran off to, he's holding on tight. Kid's made of steel (and things far older she has no realm of measure for). They've lost too much already, she won't lose hope. She won't-- 

_Knock knock_

Something’s flown up next to them on radar. Much too small to be a grimm, Maria had assumed it was a bird. It’s neither of those things. She looks out the window to her left and _Oscar Pine is outside the window_. 

Now, Maria Calevara does not shriek. She does, however, startle with enough force to jimmy the control stick. Her cargo, who had started to plan quietly, have much less decorum in the shrieking department. 

"What was that?" Ruby calls up to Maria. 

Maria is reasonably distracted at the moment. Oscar--who is _outside the window_ \--waves apologetically. Pip squeak's covered and dirt and practically horizontal, moving through the air at pace with the airship. Green sparks dance in and out along his body. As Maria levels back out, he gets his fingers on the metal ledge of the window. 

Maria taps on her ear com and shouts at him, "What in the _hell_ are you doing out there, boy?" Besides the obvious. Boy's an ancient _wizard_ , Maria's been bracing for _something_ like this. At least it appears to still be the kid, and not the older one. 

Oscar points to his ear with his free hand, shrugs, and shakes his head apologetically. His comm must be busted. 

By now, Maria's got another handful leaning over the back of her chair. "What's-- _oh my gosh_ ," Jaune says. "Oscar!" 

Now there's even more handfuls crowded around the cockpit. Oscar, bless his heart, grins and waves at them. Maria spots his hand trembling. She remembers his aura is completely out and they're more than a mile in the air. 

She presses the button to slide open the door and calls to the back, "Penny!"

No elaboration necessary, there's a whirr of rocket boots and then Penny floats into view next to Oscar. Penny puts her hands around his shoulders and says something to him no one else can hear from inside the ship. But the kid shakes his head. Argues something back. Oscar pushes out ahead of their flight path, stops to gesture at Maria to follow, and jumps to a hard turn east. 

Penny makes a desperate motion to Maria. 

Well, Maria's not about to let him fly off alone. She turns the ship and follows. Penny catches up to Oscar. They keep talking, somewhat shouting over the wind until Penny makes it in close. 

Ruby has fallen into the passenger's seat, and Yang stands at her shoulder. "How is he doing that?" Yang asks. Her wide eyes are glued on Oscar's feet. 

Maria refuses to keep spelling things out for these kids. "Is it not obvious?" 

“His… semblance?” Blake guesses. 

“Brothers _be_ ,” Maria swares. “Look at your scrolls, he’s got nothing for that!”

While hands reach for pockets, the comms blip open. Penny reports, “ _He says he can’t land just yet, not without filling us in.”_ She’s got a cautious hand hovering over Oscar’s shoulders, Maria notices. “ _He says if he lands he's not sure he won't crash before he’s able to finish. ...though I’m not sure how he will be able to crash if he’s no longer in flight._ ” 

That sweet, sweet, girl. 

“Tell him to at least let us fly closer,” Jaune advises over Maria’s shoulder. She can see his scroll is open to his team screen. Oscar’s icon is flashing, but Jaune’s is narrowly back into the green. 

Maria doesn’t wait for Penny to finish relaying the message before pushing the craft to close the gap between them. Jaune raises his hand towards the windshield, reaching, straining; hand beginning to glow. Oscar hasn’t responded to Penny yet when the glow transfers to his feet. Oscar looks to his boots in surprise, but doesn’t shirk back as the glow climbs his body, then shifts from gold to green. The blinking icon on the aura tracking app solidifies. The bar starts making small progressions. 

Oscar shoots them a thumbs up, but doesn’t slow down. He actually matches his speed to Maria’s new pace, pushing them faster towards gods know where--

And then she spots the silhouette on their horizon. Oh, of _course_. She’d praise the boy as clever if she were certain he’s still a single passenger. The boy is the one driving, of that she has no doubt, but this is all quite the development to have proceeded without supervision. 

Before she can sink into her speculation, the kids pull her back a few steps. 

“So is that… _magic?_ ” Ruby asks. 

“Now we’re catching up,” Maria commentates for her own catharsis. 

“Where is he taking us?” Blake asks. Ah, a refreshing spring in the pace. 

Penny chimes back in. “ _We’ll be able to dock on Amity Colosseum,_ ” she says, answering the question. “ _With the recall of troops back to Atlas propper, we should encounter no resistance. Father and I can make sure we don’t trip any security sensors._ ” 

Nora, who stands steadying Jaune, takes up the line of questioning via intermediary. "Where did he _go_?" 

>>

"To the vault," Oscar answers when Penny relays the question. "I had to try talking Ironwood down one more time."

Penny feels something unpleasant at the mention of the General. Penny may not be so skilled yet as to convert that feeling into words, but she does like to think she's made strides in the deciphering of facial expressions. The look on Oscar's face translates her same feeling. 

"What happened there?" she asks. 

Oscar's face becomes even more grim. Penny concludes he will say more detail later, perhaps when he's not about to fall out of the sky. For now he says, "Nothing good. There's no reasoning with him anymore. I only got out because I got lucky."

His attention diverts from Penny, for just a moment. His head twitches to an angle, as if hearing something else, and then shakes off whatever it was. Jaune revitalizing his aura seems to have calmed the shivering (Penny monitors his body temperature closely, and it slowly returns to an acceptable range) but his flight pattern is only barely balanced. It tips slightly and Penny steadies his shoulder with her other hand. She reports what Oscar's told her back to the others without bothering with the motion of interacting with a comm, preferring to make sure Oscar is stable. 

The others, back in the ship, chatter a plan without her. That's alright, she's not sure she'd be able to contribute much right now. Her processors seem to have slowed since their escape. They've been doing that a lot, lately. 

Penny catches Oscar glancing at her, staring for a moment when she doesn't draw attention to it. Then he looks back over his shoulder at Atlas, and then back toward their heading. She wonders what he's thinking about, but doesn't have to wait long. 

He says, "I was worried he'd have moved Atlas by now, but… Penny. Are you…?" 

Penny has an array of carefully and lovingly crafted sensors. From those deliberate like touch or sound, to those her father refers to as more of an art than a science, like her aura. Each of these she is capable of monitoring with perfect precision. 

But there is a new sensory input. She is unsure which if her limbs the signals originate from, if any at all. Much like her most visceral emotions, this is something she simply _feels._ This _feeling_ had been bright and angry and burning around Cinder, but had gone too quickly for her to analyze. Now, with Oscar, this _feeling_ has activated again. But it is not painful or vicious. It's something much smaller. Gentler. Weaker, perhaps, but no less present. It reminds her of the charging ports of her prototype days or the gentle liveliness of sunlight on her solar panels. This hadn't existed around him before. This is new. As recent as Fria's death. 

She hasn't _felt_ around anyone else. Not Ruby nor Weiss nor Jaune nor all the others. Though it has been a brief time--far too brief for the typical standards of the scientific method--she knows there is one thing that Cinder and Oscar have in common. 

The logical conclusion is that this is a sense of magic. And that if he, too, has magic, he must _feel_ like she _feels_. He must know what she is now; what she's done. 

Penny finds it too difficult, suddenly, to hold eye contact with Oscar. As if he might somehow see into her circuits and catch the sparks that pulse to spell out _guilty_. 

She knows it's just a fairy tale, but she also knows it's real. That he is the wizard and she stole what wasn't to be given to her. For a moment she hopes that she can say, "Fria, the Winter Maiden, has passed," and that he won't question any further. Just like she won't question his encounter with the General. 

But she says it and she knows she cannot hide from him. That he inexplicably recognizes something in her the way she is inexplicably recognizing something in him. 

"Penny," his hand places over hers. "I'm glad that it's you."

Penny understands the logic. "Because it kept the General from using the staff."

Oscar does consider that point, but decides, "No. Because when things got rough, you made your own choices. You followed your heart." He squeezes her hand. "That's the hardest thing to do."

Penny's information storage says that people who are young should have less wisdom than those who are older. She has very little personal data to support this. Though perhaps Oscar has had a rough day as well. 

All things considered and not considered, her heart glows. She doesn't have a physical heart like humans do, but Ruby helped her understand the turn of phrase. She is warmed by something other than particle movement. She thinks, perhaps, this is one of her father's milestones. Like when she first identified her favorite color. 

This milestone has been much less fun. 

" _Penny, dear,_ " Maria's clear voice over her radio draws her out of her thoughts. " _Ask him, for me, if he's alone._ "

This is confusing. "But… of course he's not, he's with all of us now."

" _This has a second meaning for him, he'll understand._ "

Ms. Calavera may not be a gentle woman, but she is wise. She's here and she's helping them without question. Penny… Penny trusts her. She relays her question to Oscar. 

Consideration of falsehood does not cross his face. Penny likes that about him, she decides. He may hesitate, but she has no catalogue of tells for him, because he hasn't given a chance for her to create one. His mouth does pull nervously, feeling a weight behind the question Penny has not put together quite yet. 

>>

" _He says, 'No.'_ ”

Jaune barely hears the answer. Maybe because some part of him already knew it. He's used his semblance on Oscar before, but he feels _different_ right now. Later Jaune will realize that Oscar used to feel like this all the time, before they left Mistral; when Jaune's semblance was still new and he didn't understand any of it yet. For now this difference is only a nuisance and a crack in the foundation upon which Jaune internally chants, _don't die don't die don't die don't die_

Jaune feels like he's trying to affect two things at once and he's not sure which one to focus on. He keeps bouncing between the two out of anxious desire to fix _all_ of it _right_ now, but it doesn't seem to matter. Those two things are affecting each other. Bouncing off of each other? It would all be very interesting and fascinating if it weren't complicating Jaune's efforts towards the _don't die don't die don't die don't die_

Oscar could have been anywhere he'd run off alone in the middle of chaos they'd let him fall behind why wasn't he paying attention he should have been paying attention should have known this could happen again he should have seen it it's so obvious now the bravery and the talent and _do you believe in destiny_

Jaune lets himself open his eyes, careless of whether or not someone sees the tear the escapes down his cheek when he does. He can feel through his semblance in a way his eyes could never confirm but he needs to _see._ Oscar's out there with Penny. Amity Arena blocks the skyline and the sunrise now, but that makes the boosted green glow that much easier to spot. 

Atlas is falling apart and Oscar went down into the vault and he came back out. And so help him god of _Light_ Jaune will staple himself to the kid before he lets Oscar try to go fight some fight he won't win. 

Not. Again. 

“So is that Oscar or Oz?” someone asks. 

Jaune says, “Who cares?” to everyone’s surprise including his own. 

And it really hits him that he _doesn't_ care. What does Oz being back even change? Even if Oz is in the driver's seat, it's Oscar that's important right now. Jaune can _see_ him. 

Then Penny warns them, “ _As we make our final approach to the colosseum, Oscar wants me to relay the importance that, despite the complexity of this situation, he has never actually done this before, and he would greatly appreciate it if all remarks regarding his gracelessness be withheld for a socially appropriate amount of time_.”

Nora says, “Yeah that’s Oscar.”

>>

Not that Oscar doesn’t remember having flown before. But a single event from the Long Memory, that mostly involved take-off and maneuvering, does not make for a full aviation course. At least for the gaps in his education he has a coach again. 

_**Your most important tool is your peace of mind**_ , Oz tells him. 

Some of the advice puts into words things Oscar hadn’t realized he’d already come to understand. _**Magic responds powerfully to emotion. This isn’t a bad thing, but it may try to overcompensate for you if you’re nervous, and if you don’t compensate in kind things become… embarrassing.**_

Some are more straight-forward and technical. _**Landing is all about balance and augmenting your propulsion from the ground at an even pace.**_

And the rest are sincere in every syllable as well as a remarkable balance between self-depreciating, encouraging, and insulting. _**My own first landing was a spectacular disaster involving a cart of lettuce, but I have the utmost confidence in you, and Ms. Polendina’s ability to catch you.**_

Oscar, unsure if he wants to be angry or amused, says, “ _Thanks._ ”

"For what?" Penny asks. 

"Oh, sorry," Oscar says, remembering how awkward it feels to talk to the voice in your head. He points to his temple and tries to explain, "I was talking to, uh…"

Penny's face stills (like she's loading) and then realization pops across her. "Oh! Oh, I understand! I’m so sorry--! I’ve never met--! It’s nice to meet you, sir!” She pauses. “Can he hear me?”

Oz chuckles softly, which is about as much of a laugh as he ever gives. 

“He says, ‘Likewise,’” Oscar passes on. 

They’ve come close enough to the Arena now that Oscar can see the landing zone. Oscar pushes off from Penny a little to give himself space. He's gotten the feel for the flight part of flying, but he does wobble a bit. His aura coming back is doing wonders for the cold, but he's still fighting off shivers. 

“Would you like any help?” Penny asks. 

“No,” Oscar decides. “I got this.” 

He mostly gets it. That power inside him, that he recognizes now, responds to him like a limb. It flexes like a muscle but also breathes like a separate entity. Oscar paces his own breath to match and it moves with him. He takes to the landing like he’d take to sliding into a turn. Magic creates friction on air, producing green sparks in his wake. He slows, but not quite enough before his feet hit the ground. 

Penny’s behind him, steadying his shoulders as he stops. “Thanks,” he says. He tries to push off her hands to his feet, but his knees forget how to hold weight all of a sudden. She helps him sit down. “Thanks,” he says again, suddenly exhausted. Solid ground feels both strange and welcome. Even though it's still miles in the air.

“You’re welcome,” Penny chirps. She turns towards the ship landing behind them. She seems in slightly brighter spirits. 

_**You’ve picked up something of a way with words,** _Oz says. 

“I have?” It doesn’t feel like it, with how this morning has gone so far. 

Then something slams into him from behind. For a second he thinks his body stops existing the way he's used to, and then he's standing up, Ruby's embrace holding him upright and flower petals drifting in the air. 

She holds him long enough that his legs remember how to function while she's stabilizing him. " _Gods_ Oscar we were all so worried! Jaune said you got attacked, and then they lost you during the escape! I was already trying to figure out how to break you out of prison or at least get word to you _somehow!"_ Finally she puts him down. "I couldn't let the last thing I said to you be finger guns--"

Ruby is body-checked out of sight by Nora, who takes her place with a hug that requires aura reinforcement to survive. “ _Gods_ you scared us to _death!_ You can't just run off on your own like that with no _plan_ and no _warning!_ ” 

As if that's not how Nora operates on a regular basis. Given recent events, however, he sees her point. Even if there was nothing for them to have gained by them coming with him in this. Ironwood still would have gone off the deep end. 

"I see your point," he chokes out. 

His feet leave the ground and then she drops him back down to squeeze his face between her palms. Sternly, but with barely contained hurt and relief in her eyes, she says, “What are you?”

“An idiot sandwich,” Oscar manages to say without use of his jaw. 

Nora is transferred out of the forefront by Jaune, who picks her up by the arms and rotates her out of the way. 

Oscar is stoked to see him until he spots the tears on his face. Then Jaune is on his knees and he pulls Oscar down into his arms. 

This is the first chance Oscar has had time to actually try and hug back, but this catches him off guard in a different way. "Jaune…" 

"Don't you _ever_ do that again." His hand squeezes the back of Oscar's neck. "Please."

It breaks Oscar's heart that he can't make that promise. 

Jaune seems to read his mind. "I _know_ you've got. _All of that_." Oscar appreciates the vague reference to whatever the heck his life is now. "But… I _can't…_ "

Oscar's turn to read his mind. The others don't talk to him much about Beacon, but Oscar knows enough. Jaune _can't do that again._ He _could_ , Oscar is sure, but he shouldn't have to. And yet… Oscar knows he can't make that promise. 

So when Oscar gets his arms around Jaune, more or less hugging his head, he says, "How about I bring you with me next time?" 

Jaune sniffs hard, and he somehow reaches his endless arms even tighter around Oscar, but his cracking voice sounds happier when he says, "We'll work on it."

While Jaune is still holding him, Ren stands behind him. His eyes, just as bright as Nora's, are fixed on his feet. His hands clench and unclench like he doesn't know what to do with them. 

Without releasing Jaune, Oscar takes one of them. Ren can carry someone through a whole conversation with his eyes. Ren's sorry. Oscar's sorry, too. They both squeeze until their knuckles hurt. 

Everyone else catches up all at once. Jaune works his way back to his feet under a hail of Oscar's questions. 

"It's _freezing_ you must be so cold!" Blake says.

"Yes I am," Oscar says. 

He's barely finished speaking before the next one hits. "You went to confront _Ironwood_? What were you _thinking?"_ Weiss scolds.

"Someone had to try--"

Yang asks, "On a scale of one to Yang, could I take him?"

"He's got one arm in a sling, so..." 

Nora, usual viciousness restored, asks, "How many guards did you take on the way out?"

"I didn't actually see any--" Oscar says.

"How did you get out?" Ren asks.

"So, uhm, about that--" Oscar says.

"Did Oz help you?" Blake asks.

"I almost passed out, but I think I can claim the heavy lifting--" Oscar says, valiantly attempting a full sentence and failing.

" _Passed out?_ Is flying that hard?" Yang says.

"No, this was before that--" Oscar tries one more time.

Suddenly Ruby is back, talking just as fast as she moves. "You have _magic powers_? That actually makes sense if I think about it for more than twelve seconds. What does it feel like?"

"It--"

Nora pushes in with equal intensity. "What other stuff do you have?"

In the back of his head, Oz is laughing. Oscar tries condensing into two syllables. " _Force fields."_

Ruby gasps. Nora starts to say, "Can you turn me into a--"

A sharp whistle suddenly breaks the paparazzi. Once they've all shut up, Maria rests her hand back on her cane. She nods to Oscar. 

Oscar clears his throat awkwardly. He'd been kind of grateful for the speed the 20 questions was making this whole thing go. Now he's not sure how to put this in a way that doesn't equate to reliving it. "So. About the escape thing. The vault is built deep inside Atlas, and the room is mostly a platform over this super deep pit underneath it?"

"Sounds like Haven," Yang says. 

"Yeah. Super over the top," Oscar confirms. Though he's never been into that one, he can picture the golden tree and the dark cavern below it. "Turns out that if you fall off the platform--"

Amused smiles drop and eyes widen in surprise. 

_Fall_ makes him sound like he tripped or something, though. He's not in _that_ bad of shape. "--or are pushed--"

" _What?_ " Weiss says, and everyone else's body language echoes the same alarm. 

_Pushed_ sounds so _barbarian_ though, and that's not really what happened." --or shot--"

Jaune looks almost as white as Weiss. "Oscar!"

This is not going at all as fast as Oscar wants it to, they're missing the point, here. Rapidly he finishes, "--and then you fall for a while blast a hole in the floor you kinda just pop out the bottom of Atlas!" He laughs a bit, mourning the happy mood they'd just had, but no one joins him. "Anyway I had a magic epiphany on the way down so it wasn't _that_ bad--"

Ren's hand covers Oscar's mouth. 

Jaune looks like he wants to double over and is trying to turn his spine into steel via willpower. "I don't know if I'm proud or having a heart attack," he says. 

"Welcome to being an older sibling," Yang tells him. "The sooner you settle into pride, the better your health."

>>

Ruby laughs awkwardly. She can’t deny being a handful. 

The breath of levity is cut by a deep roll of thunder. They all look towards the far skies. Over the emptying streets of Mantle, and higher still over the bright lights of Atlas, hot lightning flashes through the approaching storm. With each backlight there’s a massive silhouette in the darkness. It’s moving, somehow, shifting form and pressing forward. A sick orange light glows somewhere inside, like a swallowed sun. They can hardly see from this distance, but across the cold empty air are the roars and screeches of grimm. 

Ruby’s whole body feels the weight of the night they just had. Something in her head is still ringing from using her eyes. She’s pretty sure she strained a muscle in her shoulder fighting Harriet. She barely knows what’s going on or why this is happening and whether anything she should have done differently would have stopped this. 

None of that matters. There’s a problem to solve. There’s _people_ to save. 

Her optimism is not universal, she knows. Still it’s disheartening when the others start to speak up. 

“How are we supposed to fight that?” Ren asks, quietly. 

“Forget fight it,” Weiss says. “There’s got to be a way to get everyone out. Maybe Amity could carry everyone?” 

“It’s not fast enough,” Pietro says. “Even if we could get everyone on board in time, we never built for speed.”

“If Salem’s up there--” Nora starts to say. 

Oscar cuts them off. “We don’t have to fight,” he says. “And we don’t have to run. We just need the staff.” 

“But you said the staff can only do one thing at a time,” Jaune points out. 

Oscar nods. “We’d have to lower Atlas, but we can divert the energy into something new. We can set up a force field--around Atlas _and_ Mantle--that can keep out Salem and the grimm.” 

“That’s _perfect_ ,” Ruby says. That’s _exactly_ the third option they needed. They can keep everyone alive while standing their ground. She needs no further convincing. _Staff >>forcefield>>don’t die_ is the _what_. Now she just needs the _how_. 

Jaune could recharge the top priority fighters. She doesn’t want to split them up, but they’ll need to keep attention away from Penny as much as possible. She’s the winter maiden now, that makes her the key to the vault, too. That unfortunately takes their strongest fighter off the field, but it can’t be helped. 

She lets the others play with the idea until they’re satisfied, confident she can convince them once she has a solid plan. 

“We’d only be buying time,” Ren says. (He’ll be needed to help hide the staff once they’re clear.)

“ _Lots_ of it,” Yang says. (She’s strong and loud, she’ll draw plenty of attention.) “The _Staff of Creation_ doesn't have a battery life, and, according to Ironwood, Atlas’ climate systems can keep everyone fed indefinitely.” 

“That was _before_ taking the population of Mantle into account,” Blake says. (She and Yang kick ass together. And if they’re apart, someone will get suspicious.)

“We don’t need indefinite, we just need _time,_ ” Jaune argues. (He’ll want to help defend the relic. And Ruby doesn’t think she can pry him from Oscar right now.) “At the rate that thing’s moving, we’ve got less than an hour before we’re screwed.” 

“Twenty three minutes,” Penny reports darkly. “Tops.” 

“If Salem has the lamp, can’t she just ask Jinn how to get in?” Ren argues. 

“She wouldn’t waste a question on this,” Oscar says. They can deal with how he knows that if they all survive this. (He’ll have to stay with Penny, to know how to work the staff.)

“Even if Penny is there to open the vault, we’re already on our last legs. How are we supposed to fight our way back through the entire academy to get to it?” Weiss asks.

Ruby scans the group again. Nora will make a great front-runner. Ruby’s afraid to take Ren away from her, but she might have to. Maria and the ship will be crucial in their escape. Dr. Polendina will need to stay here. Penny can probably carry Jaune. Ruby herself will need to appear with the “raiding party” so the distraction looks legitimate. Oscar can-- 

Oscar can fly. Oscar came here from the vault. _Directly_ from the vault. 

And that’s when the last domino clicks. 

“We don’t have to,” Ruby announces. All heads turn to her. One day soon she'll wonder when she became so comfortable with that. “We just have to draw their attention away from it. The good general already gave us everything we need, for the distraction _and_ the heist.” _Heist._ She’s always wanted to be part of a heist. “A divided, panicked population for the footsoldiers, targets on our heads for the special ops…” 

She turns to Oscar and smiles. _They can do this._

“And a back door to the vault.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
